The author of nearly sixty volumes, Georgette Heyer is primarily known today as the originator and most prolific practitioner of the "Regency" historical romance. Ellen Pall, who writes Regency novels under the pseudonym Fiona Hill, defines the genre as consisting of novels that "take place in the better drawing rooms of England and are written in a dense, slang-ridden version of the diction of their period, the years from 1811 to 1820 when the Prince Regent, the future George IV, reigned in place of his mad father--the eponymous Regency." Heyer's Regency novels are notable for her extraordinary attention to historical detail, including the style of her characters' dress and their use of language--elements of her fiction that reveal her affinity for the works of Jane Austen. Heyer's concern for such issues of characterization and period is underscored by the voluminous notebooks she left behind at her death in 1974, which include...